Married or not, with children or not, once you reach middle age, or your children start their own family, or your parents pass away, or your siblings move out, you are very likely to be left living either alone or with only your spouse. That is when you will no longer need a big house, when redundant rooms will be stacked with unneeded stuff, and when your oversized living space will turn cleaning chores into a nightmare.

When you bought the house, you might be thinking about providing your family members with enough living space, focusing on the size, the interior design, the floors, the location, and the view. If affordable, you might stress the importance of having enough space for a storage room, a study room, or a stereo room. Once you move in, you start shopping, collecting, stacking and piling. Years passed and you end up having a houseful of stuff, not a houseful of children. Endless shopping has brought you endless clutters of bedding stuff, out-dated clothing, left-behind fitness equipment, or a myriad of post cards and souvenirs that you can’t even recall, stuff that you keep in the name of “saving for future use.” If you don’t get yourself into the habit of cleaning things on a regular bases, your house will soon become a storage room flooded with unnecessary posessions.

Aging—Married or Not, You’ll Have to Face It

Then your family members leave you one by one, and you get older and older. Needed space for basic living gets smaller and smaller. Your body becomes weaker and weaker for house-cleaning. Finally you realize, when your knees become too weak to carry you upstairs for a prayer, that you actually don’t need such a big house anymore. All year long, you just have that many visits to expect, and you won’t be needing so many rooms and bedding anymore, for they will be staying over less than a day.

A high threshold has been built up, when our population continues to age, when houses are no longer affordable to the younger generation, and when “buying your parents their own dwelling” has become the new trend. Want to live your later years with your children and grandchildren? Not that easy anymore.

Today, even young adults will have to start preparing themselves, both mentally and financially, and to put in mind that no matter married or not, with children or not, aging is a lonely journey that everyone will have to face sooner or later.

Middle-Aged—Learn to Let Go

Days ago, a research about aging published in Japan has proved that a human’s ability to clean and sort things weakens with age. This explains why many single elderly live in a houseful of unwanted stuff. Mobility problems and difficulty in remembering when the garbage truck would come and how to sort or recycle the trash, hinder them from cleaning their own living space. Not until they get reported by neighbors for their “bad smelling,” and only with the help of volunteers and cleaning services could they escape this nightmare of being “garbage-haunted."

The same problem can be seen in Taiwan. In the past, garbage collecting might be done for a living, to pick up unwanted recyclable items and sell them for some money. Later, it becomes a habit of these old singles, who no longer have the ability to deal with the consequences, and end up getting trapped in clutters of garbage. No matter how big the house once was, now it is left with only a strong smell in the air, a small hole for entry, a bed, a chair, and a small table—a room for eating, sleeping, and watching soap operas.

To prevent this from happening, start learning how to let go when still having the ability to clean, to sort, and to logically judge. Start from reducing material desire, and keeping life in order. If you are living on your own, or with only your spouse, try thinking about downsizing your living space.

Living Alone—How Much Space Would You Need?

It was a photograph book, featuring pictures of small-size old houses in Tokyo. Most were photos of single-room homes with a size smaller than four tatami mats combined (traditional flooring material in Japanese-style rooms). A typical room was often made of a two-shelved cupboard to store futons for bedding, a window with a hanger to dry clothes, and a simple counter for grooming or cooking. Toilets were shared with neighbors living in other floors. Need a shower? Go find a public bath on the streets. In the four-tatami-spaced room, spread out your mattress and you get a bed. Roll it back, pull out a short-legged table, and you get a workspace or a dining room.

Who had rented these single-room homes? Theater actors, not-yet-famous comedians or artists of Manga, and freedom enthusiast photographers. Most of them consider it unworthy to turn in their lifetime earnings to landlords or building companies and then lose quality of life under the burden of a mortgage. After all, as their own experience has proved, living an under-resourced life makes one desireless. As long as there is a place to sleep, a place to sit or lie down with everything within the reach of an arm, that is just sufficient for a living space.

Masaoka Shiki (正岡子規), the Japanese haiku poet, author, literary critic in Meiji period Japan, and also one of the leading characters in Shiba Ryotaro’s novel Clouds Avobe the Hill (司馬遼太郎『坂の上の雲』), had been fighting with pneumonia for the last 7 years of his life in bed, while he continued to write. As he described, the six-feet-long bed was his world. To a sick man as he was, a six-feet-long bed was even a bit too big.

The examples above are not given to ask you to give up material life altogether, but to let you see how other people are living their later years, and perhaps inspire you to do some changes.

Lifetime goals of the past—to have children, have grandchildren, then live a life of longevity. Today, as we step into the new era of the aged society, and as the journey of aging becomes a long and perhaps lonely one, lifetime goal today has become—to keep that one-and-only company to the end, and to prepare yourself for the day that one-and-only leaves you.

For such a journey, you really don’t need an overwhelmingly-big living space. In an aging society, small-sized disabled accessible apartments might become the new mainstream. Downsize your living space when you still can, save some money, and relax to enjoy the journey ahead.

Translated by Sharon Tseng.

Opinion@CommonWealth website is a sub-channel of CommonWealth Magazine. Founded in January 2013 with its main focus on social, humanity and policy issues and opinions, Opinion@CommonWealth is dedicated to building a democratic, diverse platform where multi opinions can be presented.

Currently, there are approximately 100 columnists and writers co-contributing on Opinion@CommonWealth to contemplating and exploring Taiwan's future with the Taiwanese society.

Additional Reading

♦ The Hardship of Caregiving—'Hate Me or Resent Me, I Have No Regrets'
♦ Bank Chairman Quits for His Father's Long-Term Care
♦ Changing Approach to Health Care: The Home Care Medical Revolution